Chapter 134: Herding Cats.

I couldn’t quite grasp what had happened. And Li Chou had no interest in actually telling me what had happened. Rather, it seemed like figuring out what had happened was part of my lesson.

I had the whole night to process everything. The next morning, I was in my new office and pouring over the documents once more.

A new list of tasks were set down, each of them were child’s play. At least, they should be. I’d been fairly generous with my orders previously, perhaps that was where the issue lay. With a solution in mind, I gave strict orders. I made sure that the order was given in exacting detail.

There was no way they’d fail. At least, that’s what I had thought. Against all my expectations, come the end of the day, and, well…

“They failed again?” I muttered, confused, frustrated, and a bit angry. Was he messing with me? Was this all a part of a game? A means to just get out of paying me? I didn’t think he’d be that petty…

What if I really had made a mistake?

Honestly, based on the reports… it was almost like they did even worse. Which… I wasn’t sure what to think.

The next day was… well, it was the third day since I began this little lesson. I had little to no guidance, but I was given so much. Each day came with a list of tasks, and piles of paperwork. Today, I did something a bit different.

The first day I’d only read the ancillary paperwork afterwards. The second day I perused them. Today, I’d give them all my attention before giving out orders. And, really… I didn’t feel like I had any idea as to what I was supposed to do.

Perhaps if I had a better feel for those under my employ, but I suppose that was part of the lesson. As a company executive, there was no way I could meet and know every single person under me. I’d likely only know a few key personnel, my vision would be restricted, and entirely reliant on those in my vicinity to inform me.

Sure, I could on occasion step out and get the lay of the land myself, but every moment I was out of the office was a potential opportunity lost. Was this how He handled things? I’d always thought of Him as a slacker, always seeing Him lounge around the office. Was that really true though?

Well, the jury was still out on that. For the time being, I needed to find a solution. Too many consecutive failures, and I imagine my lessons might be cut short. I’d need to show a modicum of progress, lest I be judged as having no talent.

With more caution than ever, I drafted orders and sent them out. Overall, the methodology didn’t really change, but…was that really the way?

My past failures could simply have been a fluke, yes, but doing the same thing over and over, all the while expecting a result was madness, was it not? Not just that, but failure here wouldn’t mean a loss of anything meaningful. If there was ever a time to stumble and fail, it would be now.

All of my orders, save for one, were drafted in the usual way. As for the final one, well, I was a bit paranoid. Wasteful even. Years of acting at the behest of others made it clear that orders should be fulfilled as concisely as possible. On my own, I could easily handle these orders without question, but could I say the same for others?

I wasn’t sure to be honest…

Even at my old job, it was clear. Terada was a genius. The other leads, even Tom, as much as I dislike admitting it were exceptionally capable. They didn’t need babying, I could simply point to where I wanted to go, and they’d take me there.

In the brief time of leading them, I’d done a lot, and yet… perhaps I was a bit sensitive, but what the executive said to me back then still hung over my head. Not just that, but… recent and not-so recent events have come to make me realize that…

Maybe I didn’t quite understand things as well as I thought I did.

I was raised to be a hunting dog. A tool, a weapon to be wielded by others. The skills they gave me became instrumental for pushing me forward in my daily life. Helped me get jobs, to push forward against everything else and yet…

No… perhaps I was a bit sensitive. After all, maybe that wasn’t it. Maybe I was just overthinking it.

With a shake of my head, I give the last order. I went ahead and assigned additional staff, far too many for such a simple task, and gave rather… open ended orders.

I expected failure. I wasn’t wrong, not entirely.

That night, came the reports and… well, nearly every order failed, well, technically, they all failed. The final order though, well…

“Congratulations on getting a partial success.” Liu Chou said, his words weren’t meant to be taken as demeaning and yet… they burned.

The final order had failed, technically, but simultaneously, they’d accomplished portions of their simple task. It was infuriating, and also… it made me reconsider my own thoughts.

The next day, I poured over the documents and looked at my orders and well, I butchered them. I pulled as many resources as I could, I got as many people involved as I possibly could, all to accomplish simple tasks. The sheer amount of waste present in these orders had me blushing in both shame and embarrassment.

I could even feel my current attendant’s eyes bore into me. Still, I swallowed those feelings and sent them out. That night was middling. No successes, not yet, but… I felt I was getting close.

Another day, and along with more tasks, word reached me that Morrigan had awakened. I didn’t bother greeting her, nor did I feel she wanted to be met, not yet anyway, so I continued with my tasks.

Every written order, every task had me feeling an existential pain. It was so wasteful, so very dumb. Less like I was leading around functioning adults, but meandering children, or herding cats of all things. The resources I spent simply vanished, as if into an ever-hungry maw. The vast motions I made felt futile, like trying to push back the sea.

At night, it was the same thing. Only… I saw a glimmer of something.

The next day I threw myself into it again, and yet… there was a bit of something. Something I could feel, just under my fingers.

I remember stories, stories hailing back to the second world war, of the pilots of the time. How, when the country had ramped up production after the attack, how factories were given orders to produce planes and vehicles they had no business making.

Many of their products were… bad. Janky would be a fitting word. Each tank, each plane had its own personality, some pilots would say. Each one was riddled with manufacturing errors and issues that couldn’t simply be patched out. Meaning, each crew tended to develop peculiarities.

Those very peculiarities gave them an almost prophetic sense of when anything was going wrong or would go wrong. A sense that trumped even the most delicate of instruments, or stringent of inspections.

Right now… that was what I was beginning to feel. In the last few days, I’d been inundated with information. Most of it, I understood perfectly fine. It gave me a good picture of the state of the city, how supplies were, food, and the mood of the people. They were valuable insights. Had Liu Chou given me the tasks out of hand, I’d have used that information and easily accomplished the tasks.

Not that it was entirely necessary. I already had a decent enough grasp of the city, but… did they? Did the people below me understand what I did?

Probably not. To them, the situation was an ongoing development. To the average person, they cared not for the future, only the now. Even knowing that though, trying to get what I wanted done was a near impossibility. Like someone that had never driven a stick shift suddenly being thrust into driving one.

There were countless levers available to me. Many methods and possibilities. And yet, how many of them were actually viable? Who among my people could even accomplish said tasks?

I had little to no information, not even a face to match with these faceless individuals under my employ. Yet, how was I supposed to start giving them commands?

The answer was, shockingly stupid.

It simply was, trial and error. Give a task, wait for the report and the ancillary reports. Rinse and repeat until I got a feel for that particular individual. Continue ad nauseam.

In another day or two, I had a handle of these people. It was also then that I got my first success. A success not born out of hard work, nor a truly earned one. If anything, it was a success born out of coincidence, a strange confluence of events where seemingly random factors just happened to work together.

I shouldn’t have been happy, but I was.

One success turned into two, three, and rapidly, I began to succeed with my tasks. With each success the number of duties granted to me increased, as did the breadth of my tasks. It quickly became apparent that Liu Chou was starting to shove all of his responsibilities onto me and yet…

I didn’t mind. Even if each success just brought me more bewildering rage. Like throwing dice, a game of chance, none of these people performed as expected on the same day. Requiring me to hedge bets, to create contingencies for all sorts of outcomes.

Success became the norm all too quickly, and I found myself soon enough doing everything. All from the comfort of my own office. At some point, instead of actively training the soldiers in my evenings, I was instead taking additional debriefs or handing out additional orders.

With my hands on the reins, I slowly began to work. Easing systems, not unlike settling into a car, making it mine. From adjusting the seats to the mirrors, until it felt right. Still, all the different levers and buttons were bewilderingly nonsensical.

What should have shifted the car into drive would instead blast out wiper fluid. Controls for the air would start the wipers. Steering was controlled by the volume buttons. Or so it felt.

It was a mess. Every part of my being wanted to stop this proverbial car and fix it from the ground up. Only, where would I even begin? It quickly became apparent as to why everything was so twisted, and the answer was rather simple, if not disappointing.

Politics.

Everyone had an idea, an opinion on how things should be. Each order I gave, though followed, would sometimes cross another individual. Requiring me to make plans ahead of time, plan for possible interferences. The whole city was a cesspool of vested interest. Interests that didn’t seem to care that we had a horde of monstrosities literally clawing the walls down.

There was, however, good news. With me in control, I began a new shift. Taking in reports, and observations from the soldiers, a plan was made. It wasn’t efficient, no, it was anything but. Even with all the additions and safeguards in place, the plan was like a rickety old machine that worked through sheer spite.

Rotations were made, monsters were led and slain in swathes. All to slowly cull their numbers. The progress of which was good enough that even Liu Chou couldn’t help but compliment me. Which was strange, especially when the old man became one of the many tools in my arsenal. Though not a fighter, he was useful in easing the political tensions in my moves.

Generals being upset at being told what to do. Officers upset at being transferred or moved at my discretion, seemingly with no real purpose behind it. It worked, but I could feel the whole system creaking with every passing moment, and even if I could lubricate it with spent resources, I knew for a fact it wouldn’t last long. Something Liu Chou even mentioned.

“I knew you had talent, but… getting the whole city in the palm of your hand in a little over a week is still astonishing. Only, you do realize, what you’re doing is self-destructive. Yes, you’re pushing back the tide, even culling them at a frankly stupendous rate, but you’re stepping on so many toes in the process.” He’d said after a particularly stressful day. The day itself had been rather touch and go, with a lot of last-minute orders and commands to keep the whole system from collapsing.

“I’m aware…” I muttered as I worked. Reading over more documents. “It’s also why you haven’t stopped me, isn’t it?” I asked, though, I knew the answer. Had I been a real threat to his power, the man would have stepped in. Would have put a stop to this little exercise.

As it was, even if I was succeeding, it was clear I lacked the finesse to do the job properly. It was working, but only because we had a task at hand. Because there was an existential threat facing us that forced people to reconsider challenging me.

Had this been a less extraordinary time, I’d be labeled a tyrant and evicted from my position. Still, it did give me an idea of how to properly govern. Rather, it also gave me unwelcome insights into my own past, or more specifically, into His job.

I’d always thought of Him as the gooey center. A kind of filler that kept the vacuous insides of our company afloat, all the while I built the girders and beams that would become our foundation.

Now, I was beginning to reconsider that notion. He wasn’t just there. No… if anything, he was everything. The guiding hand pushing me forward, protecting me from the consequences of my own actions… all the while making sure we always had somewhere to go, even as I rampaged.

It was clearer than ever what had gone wrong, back when I’d usurped Leo. Why everything came to a crashing halt. The executive wasn’t wrong. I’d handled the whole process wrong. I should have, immediately after deposing Leo, gotten a handle of the people under me, first and foremost.

Instead, I let things lie as they were, leaving Leo as a puppet leader for me to use. Sure, it worked, only because Leo was so amenable, but what if he wasn’t? One word from him and Terada would have refused to work with me. He was stubborn enough, that even the prospect of the division failing wouldn’t have been enough to get him on my side.

I’d have to slowly win over the common people, the basic members of the division. Slowly, and surely, usurp their devotion. Until finally, using them, I’d be able to fully take control. Instead, I’d sought out success as a means to win them over. Resorting to money as a last resort to keep them around, when, I should have used that first.

I was learning so much, and moreso, I was beginning to even question my own method of fighting. Éclair had broken down my abilities and given a simple explanation. A sort of supporting tank. Was, perhaps me being on the frontline, a mistake?

It was a question I had to ask myself as time continued to flow.

As the surrounding monsters were culled, as the threat grew less dire, it wasn’t like the world was standing still. Morrigan was doing her own thing, but she checked in occasionally with observations of the horde, her eyes peeled in case something went wrong. As for the general mood of the city and the soldiers within, it was constantly on the up and up, in spite of my own flailing around.

As for cleanup, and the market? The whole area had become overgrown, practically a jungle. As the monsters decayed and broke down, they flooded the area with energy, causing life to spring forth. All the broken stone, and debris mutated as well after being suffused in such pure energy.

Even regular stone became a magical material more than capable of putting even quality steel to shame. As for my soldiers, they recovered at a prodigious pace, the influx of energy repairing, and even improved them far beyond what they had been. Their bent and cracked armor repaired as well, only needing some supplemental materials to bring them back to full capability.

The stone soldiers that walked out of the market were a breed different. Their stone bodies were no longer simply grey, but had taken on an almost marble hue, with the channels of their body taking on a cerulean he. The channels, like veins worked through their body, slowly strengthening them, even their eyes seemed to glimmer with a blue light.

The armor they wore was also an order stronger and more capable. Making them notable to all, even those with dull senses.

It was odd, but as they grew, it almost felt like they were becoming more alive. Whether that is true or not, ultimately, it didn’t matter. Rather, all that did matter was that they were ready and able to fight.

Which was good, because as the tide died down to just a scant few. Morrigan came crashing into my office, bearing ill tidings once more.

“Something is heading our way!” She announced again. Though, this time at least, it didn’t seem like it was at our gates. Not yet anyway.